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Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Pew Poll finds President Trump is more popular among Republicans than the party's congressional leaders. Asked specifically who they'd trust if the two sides disagreed, most Republicans chose Trump. At 86% approval among Republicans and independent leaners, Trump remains highly popular. Only 57% view Sen. Mitch McConnell favorably-LA Times, 2/22/17

As for
Democrats, they're strongly in an oppositional mood. Asked if they were
more worried that Democrats in Congress would go too far in opposing
Trump or not go far enough, more than 70% of Democrats said they feared
their party would not go far enough. Only 20% said they worried the
party would go too far.

Republicans in Congress have eyed Trump warily
on several fronts. His positions on trade and entitlement reform
break with years of the party's positions. His reluctance to criticize
Russian President Vladimir Putin has generated tension. And the
administration's lack of clarity on healthcare and tax policy have
Republican leaders guessing which way to turn on major issues.

But Republican partisans have fewer reservations than their elected
representatives.Eighty-six percent to 13%, those who identify as
Republicans or as independents who lean Republican have a favorable view
of Trump, the Pew survey found.

At the same time, Republican partisans now
have a warmer opinion of their party leadership than they had during
most of President Obama's tenure....

During the Obama years, GOP partisans tended to be frustrated that their
side could not reverse the president's initiatives, even with a
majority in the House, starting in 2010, and then in the Senate for
Obama's last two years. Their view of the GOP leadership has rebounded
strongly since the election.

Democrats' view of their
congressional leadership has been more stable. And both sides widely
dislike the other party's leaders."
..................................

"The analysis in this report is based on
telephone interviews conducted February 7-12, 2017 among a national
sample of 1,503 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S.
states and the District of Columbia (377 respondents were interviewed on
a landline telephone, and 1,126 were interviewed on a cell phone,
including 680 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted
by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of
Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of
landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both
samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were
conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample
were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female
who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with
the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years
of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology,
see http://www.pewresearch.org/methodology/u-s-survey-research/

The combined landline and cell phone
sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender,
age, education, race, Hispanic origin and nativity and region to
parameters from the 2015 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and
population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample
also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status (landline
only, cell phone only, or both landline and cell phone), based on
extrapolations from the 2016 National Health Interview Survey. The
weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with
both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being
included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among
respondents with a landline phone. The margins of error reported and
statistical tests of significance are adjusted to account for the
survey’s design effect, a measure of how much efficiency is lost from
the weighting procedures."...